CRAZY SHOOTOUT! Is This The Plot To A Movie Or A Bank Heist Gone Wrong?

Sometimes, real life can seem like the movies. It is hard to believe that there are massive robberies and shootouts in the world, but it seems that life can sometimes still be stranger than fiction.

In Paraguay, 50-armed robbers showed up with high-caliber weapons, grenades and dynamite. They even had caltrops, which are spiked chains made to burst tires. They got together to assault an armored car company and made off with millions.

They got away via land and water.

There is an area where three borders meet, between Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina. The border patrol is weak there, so it is a hotbed of criminal activity. Typically, that just means the passing along of contraband, but in this case, it was the site of the robbery.

On Tuesday, eight people were arrested related to this robbery after a shootout occurred. Three members of said gang were killed in the shootout.

The total amount of money stolen is estimated to fall at $40 million. The biggest suspect for the crime is the Brazilian criminal organization known as PCC (First Capital Command.)

From La Times:
Directly after the explosion, the gang members took residents of neighboring homes hostage during a first shootout with Paraguayan police, which lasted two hours and left one officer dead. Three civilians were injured. Police said they encountered large-caliber weapons, explosives and caltrops, as well as snipers.
During their escape, the robbers used Molotov cocktails to set 15 vehicles on fire in different areas of the city, the Paraguayan national police said. One vehicle, which was abandoned in front of Prosegur, had Brazilian plates and was used to transport explosives and other equipment used in the heist. The other 14 apparently were meant to create diversions, with one blocking the road out of town. A local police station was also attacked. In a radio interview Monday, Paraguayan Interior Minister Lorenzo Lezcano said that most of the vehicles used in the robbery had Brazilian plates and that one hostage heard the gang members speaking in Portuguese. Police believe that the gang escaped in several of the security company’s armored vehicles and that they may have transferred the stolen money into boats waiting on the Parana River. Some of the robbers are thought to have traveled about 30 miles downriver to the Brazilian city of Itaipulandia, where the second shootout and arrests took place.